PATTERSON ROGERS
(ancestor of William L. Rogers)
Clark Denton and Pearl Denton, San Angelo, descendants.
Patterson Rogers was born February 28, 1796. He was the son of James R. Rogers of Tennessee, who was a cousin of Commodore Rogers of Maryland. Patterson Rogers married Elizabeth Blair Long, who was born October 28, 1796, and was only a few months younger than her husband. Descended from the Longs of Tennessee, of distinguished character and accomplishments, she was also a descendant of the distinguished Blair family of Virginia.
Patterson Rogers and Elizabeth Blair Long were schoolmates before their marriage, in 1814.
One child was born in Tennessee, December 30, 1815. They moved later to Butler and still later to Lowndes County. Eight of their ten children reached maturity, and moved to Texas. These were Anderson W. (killed during the Mexican War by Mexican banditti), Mary, Lieun Morgan, William L. (whose throat was cut by the bandits at the same time that Anderson W. was killed at the ford of the Little Colorado, en route to Point Isabel, but who escaped by a miracle, almost), Louisa Jane, Patterson Columbus, Washington Clark and Emeline Nancy (Snively).
The Rogers family started to the Colony of Texas but arrived just after the battle of San Jacinto in the latter part of April. Owing to the unsettled state of affairs, they went back to Louisiana, and located at Many, in the southern part of the state, where they bought their own home, and lived for about ten years, or until Texas had decided to enter the U. S. as a commonwealth of that republic.
Patterson Rogers, like so many other Tennesseans, enlisted to go to Florida with General Zachary Taylor, in the United States Army. His wife remained at home with her children and opened a boarding house. After General Taylor had conquered the fierce Indian tribes of Florida, they were moved from Florida to the reservation chosen for them in the Territory. On their journey the Indians passed by the Rogers home. Several Indian women came to the door and asked for water, one of them carrying a pretty little papoose. Mrs. Rogers laughingly said, “I wish you would give me that baby.†“Me selle,†replied the Indian. “How much,†asked Mrs. Rogers. “Ten dollars,†replied the Indian. Mrs. Rogers gave the Indian woman the ten dollars and took the Indian papoose. She named her Ellen, and while difficult, she raised her, and when grown, this Indian girl became one of the kindest and most devoted slaves that ever lived.
No doubt Patterson Rogers and General Taylor were lifelong friends as they came from the same section of the country, and at least knew each other well in the Florida war. After Patterson Rogers’ return to Louisiana, he was stationed for some time at Fort Jessup, which garrison was under General Taylor’s division, since his retirement from the active service in the U. S. Army, his headquarters being at Baton Rouge, where his wife and daughter, Betty, had established their permanent home. — Ref. Times, June 5, 1936.
Following the Indian war, Patterson Rogers and General Zachary Taylor resided near each other in Louisiana until General Taylor was ordered to occupy Texas in the late summer of 1845. Patterson Rogers’ sons, Anderson and Lieut. Rogers, and his son-in-law, Roswell D. Denton, who had been appointed sutler for General Taylor’s Army, entered Texas with the Army of Occupation and encamped at Corpus Christi, Texas, August, 1845. In February 1846, Roswell Denton moved his family to Corpus Christi where General Taylor’s Army was still encamped. Patterson Rogers and wife, Elizabeth Blair Rogers, a descendant of the Longs of Tennessee, who were relatives of the celebrated Blair family of Virginia, and daughter Emeline Rogers, moved to Corpus Christi, both families on the same boat and bringing their slaves and household good with them.
March 8, 1846, General Taylor’s Army was thrown forward from Corpus Christi to Point Isabel, Texas, where he established a depot of supplies and thence pressed forward to the Rio Grande where he had been ordered. Roswell Denton moved on to Point Isabel where he built a store for his supplies, which he sent in small quantities to the army as needed. The Rogers brothers assisted him with his goods and stores. At this time he was in need of the teams, and Anderson Rogers’ services in particular. He advised them of the conditions existing about Point Isabel, fearing for his supplies.
General Taylor and Colonel Twigg had returned to strengthen the defenses. The Mexican and American opposite Matamoros were fighting and he warned them that it was unsafe for them to travel about even with 10 or 12 in a party. His warning came too late. Patterson Rogers and his sons, Anderson and William Rogers, started with a supply train from Corpus Christi destined for Point Isabel during the last days of April 1846. There were 15 men, three women and four children all told, en route for the front. They reached the Arroyo Colorado near the present city of Harlingen, also San Benito on May 1, 1846, and were surprised by a company of Mexicans from Reynosa, commanded by Juan Antonio Baillie. Two of the men, Horton and Allenbrook, were shot immediately.
The others were stripped, their throats cut and their bodies precipitated from the bluff into the water of the creek below. Subsequently, a fiercer demon of the Mexican party murdered the women and children. It so happened that although William Rogers had received a fearful and almost fatal gash in the throat, which cut his windpipe, still, with wonderful presence of mind, he took advantage of the friendly bank of the arroyo and screened himself from observation until the Mexicans retired. Then he swam the creek.
For four days he wandered in the trackless waste between the Colorado and the Rio Grande, covering his aching head and blistering body from the burning sun by daubing himself with mud as frequently as opportunity permitted. He could drink and eat but little. His only nourishment was water and berries, and these could only be swallowed by lying with his back flat upon the ground. Directing his steps by the booming of the cannon at Fort Brown, he made his way to Ranchita on the Rio Grande, now Brownsville, fully 40 miles from the scene of the massacre, and again fell into the hands of the Mexicans. They took him to the city of Matamoros and cast him into a filthy hole, used as a hospital. He received no attention until exchanged after the Battle of Resaca de la Palma when he had the good fortune to fall into the hands of Dr. N. R. Jarvis of the U. S. Army, who first of all cleansed the gaping wound of the flyblows and the worms. Now, General Taylor, his father’s friend, had him well cared for, and subsequently dispatched a vessel solely to take him from Point Isabel to his home in Corpus Christi.
Clark Denton of San Angelo, Texas, was born at Corpus Christi, Texas, October 12, 1849, a descendant of two pioneer families. His father, Roswell D. Denton, sutler for General Taylor’s Army and grandfather Patterson Rogers, moved their families to Corpus Christi, Texas, February 1846.
His early childhood was spent at Refugio, Texas, where the family moved back in 1851. One of the thrills of his boyhood days was riding around the school grounds on the back of a government camel which had strayed from the herd when unloaded at Indianola in 1856. Another was when Jerry and Bob Driscoll, Rye and Amos Martin came to the schoolhouse to bid their schoolmates good-bye on their way to join the Confederate Army, and girls and boys alike shed tears as they rode away. In Victoria County Clark rode the range until 1868 when he returned to Corpus Christi and entered the Hidalgo Seminary for boys where he completed his education. He was a member of the Presbyterian Sunday School.
His first job was bookkeeper in his uncle’s wheelwright shop where all types of vehicles were made. He often helped in their construction. There were several workmen. Arthur Hart was head mechanic. The material was shipped in, in the rough, and had to be dressed and shaped. For three years he was in the St. James, the leading hotel of that section, two years of which he was in partnership with Charles Emmet. They leased the hotel from his uncle, William Rogers, ran it on the European plan, and did a thriving business until a yellow fever scare, which caused almost the entire population to desert the town.
He recalls the exciting days of 1874, the Penescal and Swift murders, particularly. He was with Billy Rhew’s searching party, in search of the Penescal murderers, and remembers vaulting his horse into a dense thicket at dusk and finding saddlebags filled with lump sugar, covered with blood, the loot of the murderers. But the Mexicans had escaped. He was in a party of 15, in charge of his uncle, William S. Rogers, in search of the Swift murderers. They went to San Patricio, 25 miles away, and guarded the river crossing. The next morning they found the Mexicans’ trail and followed it for 50 miles, only to lose it.
Clark Denton, at the age of 86 years, is still young in spirit, taking an interest in present day affairs, yet still likes to recall the old days.
Clark Denton is a non-resident charter member of the “Descendants Fraternity†organized in Corpus Christi, Dec. 5, 1935. — Ref. Times, Jan. 2, 1936.
Denton-Rogers Family
The Rogers-Denton biography continued from the date of the “Army of Anticipation†as the garrison at Fort Jessup, La., was called after it was known that General Taylor had been ordered by President Polk to make ready to defend the boundary line of Texas, then almost a member state of the Union, against the incursion of Mexico under Santa Anna. General Taylor preferred to go to the mouth of the Nueces River by boat instead of by land. He therefore embarked his army on the Red River and sailed down to the Mississippi, then to New Orleans, where, after considerable delay, General Taylor set sail for St. Joseph’s Island and the east bank of the Nueces, at the junction of the Corpus Christi and Nueces bays, where he arrived about the first of August, 1845, several months before the United States Congress declared war against Mexico.
Roswell D. Denton, a regular army soldier from New York, was stationed at Fort Jessup, to complete his enlistment. Patterson Rogers and family continued to live at Many, La., even after Patterson Rogers had been discharged from service in the Indian war in Florida under General Taylor, who had been transferred to Louisiana, as he thought, for the remainder of his life and for the life of a Louisiana planter.
It was there that the beautiful daughter of Patterson Rogers, Louisa Jane, met the handsome and gallant Sgt. Roswell D. Denton, possibly at one of the garrison’s exclusive military balls, and the beau of the North fell a loving victim to the charms of the belle of the South, and soon afterwards when Sergeant Denton’s term of service expired, he led his lovely bride to the altar, where “the sweet magnolia blooms†and the long-leaved pine forest trees reared their stately heads toward the sky.
Coming from the industrial north, Sergeant Denton soon took on the life of a business man, and had just become well launched in general merchandise when General Taylor was ordered to take his army to Texas as before related.
No doubt the commanding officer of the garrison was well acquainted with the service of Denton as a soldier, and also his fine ability in merchandising for he was offered the “sutlership†of Taylor’s army. This he accepted, coming with the army to Corpus Christi, then Kinney’s Landing and Shipping Post.
His three oldest brothers-in-law came along with him and the army, Anderson, Lieun and William Rogers. All were well educated but the oldest brother was exceedingly well educated, and had traveled also. At one time, he was in Montgomery County, Texas, as was his brother, William, in the early part of 1845. William attended school at San Augustine, Texas, in 1842. A sutler was a traveling quartermaster, as it were, and on reaching Corpus Christi and the encampment established, Anderson secured a position in the quartermaster’s department of the United States Army, where he had a cousin, William Smith, also working in the quartermaster’s department.
The other two brothers mentioned secured work with their new brother-in-law in the sutler’s store.
They all proved quite efficient in their work, and made a success of the business. The Rogers family, with the young Denton bride still remained in Louisiana, owning to the uncertainty of Taylor’s army movements. Anderson and William returned to Many; but Lieun remained with Denton in his commissary. — Ref. Times, June 8, 1936.
Steamboat Dayton Tragedy
Taylor’s army came to Corpus Christi in August and September, 1845; that is, some of the units had been established, and others were coming over. All those who came by boat had to debark at St. Joseph’s Island and take the “lighters†through the flats to Nueces Bay and Corpus Christi Bay.
The steamboat Dayton had been condemned and was on its last voyage with its soldiers boys, their officers and the crew when the boilers exploded and the boat blew up, then sank. The crew were thrown into the warter. Several were killed outright, others were badly scalded and died later. It was a fearful catastrophe for the chief of the quartermaster’s department, in whose department young Anderson Rogers was employed, and for those brave young men, who had come all the way from the eastern seaboard to fight for the rights of Texas, romantic Texas.
In the spring of 1846 it became evident that the United States was through with its plan of “watchful waiting†and would soon move toward the Rio Grande, as word was sent to Taylor that the Mexicans in force had crossed the Rio Grande and were organizing their forces to march on to the Nueces.
President Polk, finding Congress still arguing and delaying the declaration of war, ordered General Taylor to move his army to the Rio Grande. Roswell Denton knew then that he would have to follow the army, and so he and his father-in-law decided to move their families from Many to Corpus Christi, Texas, from which point the army would move to the south. So in February, 1846, Elizabeth Rogers, wife of Patterson Rogers, with her son, Anderson, and her daughters, Emeline and Louisa Jane, Mrs. Roswell D. Denton, who had remained with her mother at Many and was now the mother of a little daughter, Elizabeth, who was only about a month old, took a boat, and although by a roundabout way, they arrived safely at Corpus Christi the latter part of February, just before the army left for Point Isabel and the Rio Grande. Others on the boat to Corpus Christi were the Fulcrod family, who settled at Goliad and also Dr. Nott’s family, all of whom lived to enjoy a long and warm friendship.
Patterson Rogers with his sons came by land with the household good and also the Rogers and Denton slaves, stock, etc. Rogers was able to establish his family in a home before he went to the front. His home was built on Corpus Christi Bay, opposite North Bluff, several blocks south of the old St. James Hotel.
Roswell Denton established two more stores for the army, one at Point Isabel, for General Taylor’s army headquarters encampment, and the other at San Antonio, for the Texas volunteers, placing Lieun Rogers in charge of the latter. This store or commissary was first located in San Antonio, but later Lieun moved to old Mission Conception, two miles from San Antonio, as the volunteers were encamped only 300 yards from the mission. He cleaned out two rooms of the old mission, smoked out bats, owls, etc., and finally set up his store in these quarters.
The supplies were shipped to Corpus Christi from New Orleans and hauled overland to San Antonio. It was the middle of April before Lieun saw any of his family. Roswell Denton now went to New Orleans to ship the supplies from there direct to the headquarters at Corpus Christi, leaving Anderson Rogers, who had returned with his mother from Louisiana, to take charge of the headquarters store at Corpus Christi, from which point all of the supplies were to be shipped to San Antonio and to Point Isabel.
Anderson took some of the supplies to Point Isabel by boat. Anderson was at St. Joseph’s Island on his return, and a perfect understanding with Roswell Denton and Anderson was that he and William would go down to Point Isabel by way of Padre Island with the supply train, and he received a further note to that effect on April 25, 1846, with the instructions that he and William were to remain at the front.
For some unknown reason, the plans were changed the supply train was taken by the Arroyo Colorado instead of Padre Island. Patterson Rogers, having settled his family comfortably, joined his sons and the company going with wagon train. They were not anticipating any trouble because the army with all its slow-moving equipment had not seen any sign of danger along the Arroyo route. A letter from Roswell Denton giving warning of the danger came too late, owing to fact that the mail and passenger boat between Point Isabel and St. Joseph’s Island made the trip only every few days, after which the mail had to be carried across to Corpus Christi by boat, and everything moved slowly in those days.
The story of the shocking tragedy of that supply train and its 22 men and women had been related in a previous article, but no words will ever express the brutal massacre of those brave men and helpless women and little children. Patterson Rogers went down with his sons to join his friend, Gen. Zachary Taylor.
General Taylor, after the Mexican War was over and he had been awarded the highest honor of his nation, the presidency of the United States, died, after a brief occupancy of the White House, surrounded by his family, holding the hand of that noble wife. Margaret Smith Taylor. She had for 16 years persistently accompanied him, then Major Taylor, on the western frontiers, literally in a savage wilderness. Later she accompanied her husband, then Colonel Taylor, to the dangerous and difficult task of taking command against the treacherous Seminoles of the Everglades of Florida, where she established herself and her young family at Tampa. yes, all the devotion of those long years of his life on the outskirts of civilization was his.
Even the incidents of the Battle of Okee-Chobe must have passed in review in those last moments when mother and wife and wilderness companion was holding his hand as he passed into the Great Beyond. Looking at his beloved wife he said: “I am about to die. I expect the summons soon. I have endeavored to discharge all my official duties faithfully. I regret nothing but that I am about to leave my friends and my family.â€
But what about his loyal friend of Florida’s trying days? What about Patterson Rogers, who was going to Taylor on the Rio Grande to offer his friendship and service again? Patterson Rogers’ body lies buried in an unknown grave, beneath the water of the Arroyo Colorado, in Texas. His blood was spilled for Texas on Texas soil, and he died with no opportunity to hold his dear Elizabeth’s hand, as he was flung into the treacherous waters, but one may be sure that a lightning flash of their true companionship passed before him. Both of these Texas-Mexican War patriots gave their services to Texas, and both will be remembered by their loved ones and in the hearts of their friends and grateful Texas.
It must not be forgotten that when the only surviving Rogers of the Arroyo Colorado massacre, William Rogers, was restored to his brother-in-law at Point Isabel, it was General Taylor who ordered a boat dispatched to Corpus Christi to take William Rogers to his mother to be nursed back to health. General Taylor showed in this act his true devotion to Patterson Rogers. — Ref. Times, June 9, 1936.
WILLIAM ROGERS
On the fourth day of his wanderings, he came upon a Mexican ranch where from a vacant hut on "jacal," he succeeded in attracting the attention of an old man who came to his relief bringing him clothing. After which he was taken into the house, his body bathed and a pallet given him on which to lie down and rest.
He remained with the Mexican until he had regained some measure of strength, when he was taken to Matamoros, and turned over to the Mexican authorities as a prisoner of war. Here he met a number of his Fort Jessup acquaintances, who were also prisoners of war, and to whom he told his story. His friends were so moved by his sufferings that his story became known to the Mexican guards. He was taken out of the general stockade and placed in the "Red Prison" which it was understood was used only for those prisoners who had been decreed to be shot.
However, in a short time an exchange of prisoners took place between the Mexicans and Americans. All of the Americans were exchanged but young Rogers. The released prisoners remembering him and not seeing him, made inquiries about him, but not getting a satisfactory answer, they thought something must be wrong and immediately reported the case to the distinguished General Twigg, whom he had known in Corpus Christi as General Taylor’s greatest officer. General Twigg, commanding Fort Brown, and knowing young Rogers’ father, Patterson Rogers, well, took a personal interest in the son’s case. General Twigg sent a flag of truce to Matamoros to inquire whether all the Americans had been released and received the answer that they had all been released. He then sent for his released prisoner’s informant, and questioning him closely as to the circumstances of young Rogers’ capture and treatment, satisfied himself that Rogers was being held to conceal the bloody work of the Mexican bandits.
General Twigg made up his mind to set the young prisoner free at any cost. He accordingly sent a second flag of truce to the Mexican commandant at Matamoros, asking him to make a thorough search for another American prisoner, whom he thought had been overlooked; but he received the same answer as before from the Mexican officer.
General Twigg then sent a third deputation, giving an accurate description of the prisoner, his name and the circumstance attending his capture, at the same time notifying the Mexican authorities that unless the young prisoner was forthcoming at the specified time, designated by the delegation sent, he would immediately open fire on the city and batter it to the ground. This had the desired effect and the prisoner was immediately delivered to his friends and brought to General Twigg, where he expressed his gratitude to his commanding officer and fried.
William L. Rogers returned to Corpus Christi, a sad and grateful man. He died in Corpus Christi in 1877, on December 17, a wealthy man and highly honored citizen. At the time of his death, he was the representative of Nueces County in the State Legislature; also he had been vice-president of the Corpus Christi, San Diego and Rio Grande Railroad Co.
Three of the Rogers brothers survived, and they knew the Mexicans who killed their father and brother. The Mexican villains lived at Reynosa, just across the river in Mexico. They met the punishment they so richly deserved, and all were killed, at a later day. It is said that not one escaped.
Mrs. Snively was a devoted daughter and beloved sister, and she lived to comfort her mother and her brothers when the agony of that awful crime against two members of her family, her father and her oldest brother, was fresh in the minds of her family and friends. She outlived her brother William L., dying December 23, 1899, at Rockdale, Texas. She attended school in Corpus Christi and was long remembered by her schoolmates who grew up with her. — Ref. Times, June 4, 1936.
Source: DeGarmo, Mrs. Frank. Pathfinders of Texas, 1836-1846. Austin: Press of Von Boeckmann-Jones, Co., 1951.
Transcription by: Rosa G. Gonzales